How to manage your contacts with the free HubSpot CRM

Contact management is the process by which a company registers and tracks contacts. To implement a proper marketing strategy, it is necessary to store details of users and monitor their interactions with the brand. These actions are essential to improve customer relations and sales. Customer Relationship Management or CRM is the set of practices focused on providing the best customer service. Therefore, all companies must have a CRM system that ensures the optimisation of processes and their profitability.

HubSpot offers a free CRM that facilitates contact management. It is a software that allows you to manage contacts and organise their data to facilitate marketing actions. It is a digital tool that improves communication between current and potential customers. Among its functionalities is the registration of names, addresses, emails or phone numbers in a database. It also saves conversations and organises data based on their value in the commercial process. The marketing and sales strategy can be carried out in the same place , accelerating the company's productivity and increasing the performance of the work teams.

Benefits of using HubSpot's lead management software

HubSpot's software is characterised by automating the processes of contact management. It accesses information from the database, analyses the history and applies marketing actions to start the sales process. The CRM has a technology that favours small and medium-sized companies by managing their contact lists. Some of the advantages of using HubSpot's free software are:

• Integrate HubSpot CRM with other applications.
• Improve the customer-business relationship.
• Sort and organise contacts based on their interactions, likes, interests or characteristics.
• Get reminders for the Marketing and Sales automation process.
• Automate personalised interactions in social networks or email marketing.
• Reduce investment.
• Integrate HubSpot CRM with tools like Gmail or Outlook.
• Manage your entire marketing and sales strategy from one place.

why is contact management and segmentation necessary?

Contacts are the basis of any marketing strategy and help the company to grow. To offer a good service, it is important to understand their needs. This is achieved by managing and segmenting contacts to have a comprehensive overview of each user, their information and interaction with the brand. In In Inbound Marketing, the goal is to send the right content in the right context to each user. The only way to achieve this is by dividing users into small groups based on their similarities.

How to manage your contacts with HubSpot

1. Create contacts

HubSpot's free CRM allows you to create contacts easily. You can do this manually by going to the main menu and clicking on the Contacts tab.Then, the platform will show you a list of all existing records. In the top right corner you will find the Create contact button. From there you can enter the personal data: email, first name and surname. If there is no contact with this email address, the record will continue and you can include different data such as the buyer persona, owner of the contact or job title.

If the company follows the GDPR, the contacts should be imported indicating their compliance, the type of subscription associated and the use that will be given to this data. If you want the contact to receive marketing emails in an automated way, check the box Configure this contact as a marketing contact. When the configuration is complete, click on Create contact or Create and add another one at the bottom.

how to view contact information

The CRM allows you to access the full information of a specific contact from the Contacts tab in the main menu. A search icon appears in the top left hand corner where you will need to enter the user's name to enter their profile. Their personal information and interactions with the company will be displayed. From the left hand sidebar you can view the manually saved data on the record. The right hand sidebar will display their attachments, associated companies and businesses. In the centre of the screen you will see the interactions with the brand in chronological order. Above the chronological panel, tabs are included to perform quick actions such as sending an email or making a call.

2. Store and specify marketing contacts

To modify marketing contacts, simply set user permissions by checking the Modify marketing contacts checkbox. Once enabled, contacts can be organised into marketing or non-marketing based on forms and interactions. Some of the actions that can be taken include:

• Import existing contacts in Import Files > Contacts.
• Track contact billing from Reports > Contacts and Billing.
• Synchronise contacts with ad campaigns from Ad Settings > Connect Account.

Chatflows and Forms tools allow you to modify and control marketing users, and these settings can be automated in the Actions tab with workflows provided by HubSpot.

3. Create contact lists

To increase the number of users and build customer loyalty, it is necessary to have a proper marketing campaign. Companies must have a contact list to organise user data and apply marketing actions. HubSpot's free CRM offers a database to gather this information and create contact lists with segmented audiences. There are different categories to organise the groups, some of them are age, gender, geographic location or stage of the sales funnel, among others. HubSpot has two types of contact lists:

• Active lists: These are updated automatically based on previously defined criteria. Contacts enter the list when they meet certain characteristics and leave when they no longer have them. The advantage of these lists is that they guarantee that the action will be sent at the right time and not out of context. In other words, if you want to send a marketing email, you will ensure that it does not reach someone who has unsubscribed from the newsletter.
• Static lists: These are used to monitor a group of contacts that meet a set of requirements at a specific time, but they are not updated. Contacts are added or deleted manually.

how to create a list in HubSpot?

To create a list, go to the main menu and select Contacts > Lists. In the top corner, click on the Create List button. HubSpot offers the option of creating a contact-based or company-based list. After that, name the list and choose its static or active typology. Click Next to open a configuration panel where you can add filters to segment your lists. This creates a list. To access the list view, go back to the Contacts tab and click on Add View > Create New View.